


How Could You Be So Perfect For Me

by dickviolin



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Fluff, I'm shit with tags, M/M, On the Road Again Tour, Take Me Home Tour, The X Factor Era, Up All Night Tour, Where We Are Tour, absolute awful fluff, all eras tbh, it's cute idk, literally just pure fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-10
Updated: 2015-03-10
Packaged: 2018-03-17 07:14:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3520214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dickviolin/pseuds/dickviolin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hela's birthday fic, even though it's been weeks since her birthday woops. This is basically Liam falling in love with Zayn over the years, except it's not explicit when and where he falls in love. Make of that what you will. Pure fluff. Title based on 'Out of the Blue' by Julian Casablancas because I'm that boring</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Could You Be So Perfect For Me

If Liam could trace his relationship right back to its root, it would go back far further than the McDonalds where he and Zayn first met. Nineteen years further back, to be precise- right back to when Louis Tomlinson was first brought into the world, and whatever combination of genetics and upbringing that caused him to be the world’s most annoying roommate first developed.  
“Louis won’t stop singing Elton John,” declared Zayn. He was silhouetted against the overly bright lights of the corridor outside, “So I’m sleeping in here.”   
Liam sat up. It was one in the morning. The skinny boy he’d met that morning- the one with the accent- was standing at his bedroom door, inviting himself in.   
“There’s only one bed, though,” Liam mumbled. The fact that there was only one bed shouldn’t have taken precedence in his priorities over ‘we’ve only just met’ and ‘what?’, but it did, and that’s Liam through and through.   
“Doesn’t matter. Budge up.” Zayn unceremoniously dumped a sports bag at the end of the bed and got in. In the back of his mind, Liam noticed that Zayn was only wearing briefs, but sleep soon swallowed any thoughts at all.

As soon as he closed his eyes, Liam’s alarm went off, or so it seemed. Another day. Another round of rehearsals, interviews, stupid little clips for ITV specials. Hair and makeup and stylists and journalists and producers and choreographers and Liam wanted to sink into his sheets, dissolve and _fuck off fuck off fuck off_. Liam smacked his alarm and growled. He didn’t want to be responsible, clean-cut, chipper hi-I’m-Liam. He wanted to _sleep_.   
He sat up. His clock said it was the ungodly hour of six-thirty; it was still dark outside. The corridor outside was silent. So was the room. In fact, all Liam could hear was the sound of his heart. And his breathing.   
It wasn’t his breathing. In confusion, Liam looked at his stomach. The rising and falling didn’t match the sound. _Oh right. Zayn._ The other boy was still asleep. Louis wasn’t joking: he really could sleep through an earthquake.   
Zayn was the only person Liam had ever met who didn’t look like a walrus when asleep. His mouth- a neat little rosebud- was closed, long eyelashes resting on a smooth face. Liam watched the gentle in-out, up-down motion of his breathing. His hair was messy, like he’d been tossing and turning that night. Liam shifted towards him to get a better look. From underneath the duvet, Zayn unconsciously reached out and grabbed a corner of Liam’s t-shirt. Liam felt like he’d been punched in the stomach.

* * *

Throughout the years that followed, Zayn made Liam feel like that more times than he could count. Like someone had reached into his chest and pulled his heart out, or like he was in a lift and the rope had just snapped. During the first tour, while Liam was still getting used to the whole plane-hotel-show rigmarole, Zayn was his only constant. Night after night they would start in separate rooms, but by no later than midnight one would join the other (Zayn sometimes mumbled a joke about Cinderella). Liam would curl into Zayn’s side and drift off to the sound of his breathing. When his alarm would go off, earlier than he needed it to, he was sure to turn it off quickly, in case it disturbed Zayn. It never did. Liam would turn over and watch Zayn wake up. His obnoxiously long eyelashes would flutter gently, his breathing would quicken slightly. A single slender finger would twitch. Then, gradually, the rest of him stirred into life. A frown would cross his face. Mumbling something that Liam never caught, he would turn and burrow his nose further into the duvet. 

“Morning,” Liam would whisper. It always felt too early to speak, like he was breaking the peace before it was due, but Zayn would just smile.   
“Morning, Leeyum,” he’d whisper back, “You up long?”   
“No,” he’d say, “No time at all,” and he’d mean it, every time.

* * *

 

They got older. Sometimes Liam wondered if he would have developed such a preternaturally thick skin if he’d had a normal twenties. In some ways, he mourned for the Liam that never was. Wondered if he would have been happier in Wolverhampton, doing a man’s job. Then Niall would tell a daft joke with an enormous grin, like he hadn’t just got it off the back of a Penguin wrapper, or Harry would deadpan something in an interview that slipped past the interviewer but had the rest of them in fits. Or he’d see a fan with a sign saying that they’d saved her life. He’d look at the life he’d given his family. He’d look out of his hotel room window at Dubai, at Melbourne, at Tokyo, at Los Angeles.   
He’d look at Zayn. Zayn, who acted like he rose above the very concept of boybands, who carried himself like a prince, who kept quiet until he really had something to say. Zayn, who was head and shoulders above the rest of them in terms of vocal talent but would never dream of admitting it.

One night, in a hotel in a hot country, where even with the air-con it was only sensible to sleep with the sheets pushed right down or discarded entirely, Liam found himself sitting up, drenched in sweat. A dream was fading fast- something like a tsunami, and a crowd of fans chasing him.   
His skin felt white hot, his brain fuzzy from the intensity. Blind, he reached out for something solid. His hand met rough skin. Somewhere, Liam realised he had just whacked Zayn in the face.   
“Liam?” Zayn sounded more awake than Liam had expected. Zayn sat up.   
“Sorry. Bad dream. You go back to sleep.” Liam was still staring straight ahead. He felt partly paralysed.   
“C’mere,” and Zayn was pulling him close, wrapping his arms around Liam’s torso. Liam was already too hot, but he didn’t mind the extra heat. It was a trade-off for the thick fog in his head dissipating almost instantly. Reality overtook it, beating back traces of images.   
“You OK?” Zayn whispered.   
“Yeah, sorry.” Zayn pulled back and looked Liam right in the eye.   
“What you apologising for?” he said.  
“Dunno,” Liam replied, and the only sensible thing to do, it seemed, was to kiss him.   
So he did.   
Zayn kissed back, gentle at first, then his hands moved up Liam’s chest and he pushed the bigger boy back onto the bed.   
“Hello,” said Liam.   
“Hi,” replied Zayn.  
Which made sense at the time.

* * *

 

They were much older now, or at least that’s how it felt to Liam. It was hard to believe it had only been five years. It sometimes seemed like they’d lived an entire lifetime in a single tour. That’s how it felt by the end of On the Road Again. The final show had been good- maybe not the best of the tour, but then again, no final show was exactly a model of Professional Boy Band. Liam felt odd the whole drive home.   
“You all right, babe?” said Zayn, softly.   
“Tired,” he replied. He knew Zayn was feeling exactly the same: so tired he could dissolve into the cushions of the car, but also filled with a tense, nervous energy.

Liam didn’t wake up until 12 the following morning. Somewhere in the distance, a dog was barking. They had apparently forgotten to close the curtains when they got in; light was streaming in, grey and weak. Liam could barely remember anything after they had got to Birmingham. Presumably he and Zayn had got in and gone straight to bed. Beside him, Zayn was stirring.

His beard was thicker now, especially since, in the chaos of the end of the tour, he had forgotten to trim it. His hair, thick on one side, shaved on the other, always made Liam smile when he saw it. Management had complained- said it made Zayn unapproachable, less palatable to American audiences. The fact that Zayn had done it anyway gave Liam a kick in his stomach every time he thought of it. Zayn had gone from a shy boy from Bradford to his own man. Liam thanked his lucky stars that he was alive to witness it. Today, he looked irresistible. He had pushed the duvet down in his sleep, so his top half was exposed. He was curled up facing away from Liam, who traced the smooth curve of his back with his fingertips. Liam knew that Zayn wanted all the sleep he could get, but the temptation was too great. He leaned forward and kissed up Zayn’s shoulder and into the crook of his neck, snaking an arm around his waist.   
“Morning,” he whispered.   
“Mmm,” Zayn replied. He turned round to face Liam.   
“We’re on our holidays,” Liam whispered, “No rehearsals, no flights to catch, no deadlines.”   
As Zayn woke up, he moved closer into Liam. They stayed like that for a while, just tangled in each other, one wrapped around the other.   
Later in the morning, they would kiss, and say ‘I love you’, and Liam would make Zayn breakfast, and they would live their brief window of normality. But right now, they were content together, half asleep, two halves of a shared soul that had entwined over years, one and the same.   
For now, that was all they needed.


End file.
